


Soldier, Poet

by Kiraly



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Poetry, RotT Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:02:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26960005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiraly/pseuds/Kiraly
Summary: Conversations over wine cups, slowly mending a broken relationship. Five hundred year old poetry.(Can more or less be read as missing scenes after King of Attolia, but contains mild spoilers for Return of the Thief. Proceed with caution!)
Relationships: Relius/Teleus (Queen's Thief)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 84





	Soldier, Poet

**Author's Note:**

> Many MANY thanks to [storieswelove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/storieswelove/pseuds/storieswelove) for listening to me scream as I read RotT, suggesting this story idea when I was itching to write something, and making some much-needed edits. I appreciate you so much, friend! <3
> 
> Once again if you ignored the summary THERE ARE SPOILERS FOR RETURN OF THE THIEF so if you haven't read it yet I'd personally suggest doing that first.

_I wake each morning_ _  
__the sun_ _  
__threading through the window,_ _  
__first light falling on linen_ _  
__fine as your hair,_ _  
__soft,_ _  
  
_

Teleus lifted his pen from the page to dip it in the inkwell, but before he could finish the motion there was a tap on the door. He cursed internally and hastily set the sheet aside, covering the manuscript with a loose stack of guard reports. “Enter.”

The door opened and Relius entered, followed by a boy with a tray. “Busy?” he asked, settling into the chair beside Teleus’s desk without waiting for an answer. The boy placed the tray on a small table and departed, closing the door.

“Not too busy for a break,” Teleus said, and turned to face Relius so he wouldn’t be tempted to look at the paper piles. It was not an unwelcome view. Looking at Relius, he could feel the tension ease from his forehead.

“So you say, but when do you ever remember to take one?” Relius shook his head and poured wine for two. “You spend almost as much time pushing paper as I do.”

Teleus snorted. The Secretary of the Archives had no call to be lecturing _him_ ; Teleus was just as likely to find his friend buried beneath a mountain of paperwork. “That’s the part no one tells you when you’re up for promotion. The higher you rise, the more time you spend with a pen instead of a sword.” He took a sip. “It’s not all bad, though. The wine is better.”

Relius rewarded him with a tiny smile, face illuminated like a rare manuscript. It sent a thrill through Teleus, and a pang of longing that he did his best to quell. “That it is.”

The wine was a good vintage, Teleus thought. And the company made it all the sweeter.

* * *

_soft whispers from the olive trees_ _  
__rising in my ears._

The feeling crept up on Teleus slowly, so gradually that he didn’t notice. When the realization struck, it was far too late to block or dodge the blow. Swordwork he knew, and how to call on the loyalty that lay in the hearts of men. He also knew, when those hearts turned traitor, how to run them through. 

But it was his own heart that betrayed him in the end. 

Of all the Secretary of the Archives’ secrets, his lovers were the worst-kept. A man in Relius’s position could not afford to have a spouse, a confidant who knew every part of his life. The risk was too great, and Relius no gambler. But that was no reason to deny himself life’s pleasures—or so he said, the one time he and Teleus spoke of it. It wasn’t a habit Teleus could imagine taking up himself, but Teleus was in no position to judge. Particularly not on those nights when wine and words gave way to the language of bodies pressed together, mouths too occupied for speech. 

They’d seemed a harmless indulgence, those lovers, right up until the arrest. Teleus would never forget that moment, not if he lived a hundred years: the queen’s order, the frantic march through the palace. Relius’s eyes, startled, drowning in guilt. Relius’s fingers, clasped around a vial, bleeding as Teleus smashed it from Relius’s hand. His boots crunching over the shards, shattered and poison-laced like the now-hollow place in his chest.

One never forgets the moment of love first realized, or the pain of love snatched away.

_Where,_ _  
__ask the olives,_ _  
__where, where, where_ _  
__is your lover_ _  
__now?_

* * *

Teleus was no stranger to wounds, nor to the agonizing slowness of their healing. He had plenty of other things to think about: his own failure, the king’s inexplicable pardon, a court hell-bent on making his job harder. But in between meetings about how to restructure the guard, observing the new recruits, and reminding his lieutenants of his continued authority, his thoughts strayed to the memory of a broken body in his arms, now recovering in a quiet room. 

Relius was slow to mend but seemed, for the most part, at peace with his idleness. It worried Teleus. He had never known the Secretary of the Archives to stay so still, to be content with knowing only what went on within his four walls. Then again, he had not known Relius before he was Secretary of the Archives. 

“Surely you have better things to do than read to an invalid,” Relius said, frowning as Teleus took the seat opposite his and set a book on the table. He was well enough now to sit in a chair, placed by the window to catch the sun. The room looked out onto the training grounds, where a squad was running sword drills. “Young idiots to knock some sense into. Orders to carry out.” 

“I’ve been told it’s important to take breaks. Lectured about it, even,” Teleus said, pouring the wine. 

“Oh?” Relius kept his gaze on the window and did not reach for the glass. “Who would be foolish enough to lecture you?”

Teleus shook his head. “Not a fool. A friend.” 

“A friend? Teleus,” Relius turned to look at him now, a spark of his former fierceness returned. “Only a fool would call me a friend, so soon after his own disgrace. You should be worrying about your own reputation, not—” he flicked his fingers in a dismissive gesture—or tried to. He lowered his hand, grimacing. “Not this. Not here. I’m sure the court is laughing behind their hands at the Former Secretary of the Archives, ruined by a false lover.”

“Then we are fools together,” Teleus said, “and you do a disservice to the ones still offering friendship. If their majesties can forgive, why can’t I? The court sees only what they want to see.” Teleus knew how people saw him: grim-faced, stiff-spined and rigid as iron. But he was a man, not a stone. He stood, never taking his eyes off of Relius. “You are not without friends.” He leaned down, brushed the hair from Relius’s forehead and pressed his lips there. “You are not unloved.” A kiss to the cheek. “You never will be, so long as I breathe.” Lips to lips, there and gone before Teleus could reconsider, before Relius could do more than inhale. Teleus stepped back. Relius wore a strange expression, still unreadable but more open than Teleus had ever seen. In a different man, it might have been vulnerability.

“Teleus…” he began, but trailed off. He drew breath to speak again when a knock at the door stalled him. The moment broken, Teleus opened the door and found a messenger. The queen was asking for him.

“Go,” Relius said.

Teleus went.

After the door closed, Relius sat for a long time, staring at nothing in particular. Then he reached across the table and picked up the book Teleus had left behind.

_Lover are you lost_ _  
__wandering the sunless paths_ _  
__of dreams_ _  
__alone_ _  
__to wake each day_ _  
__without me?_

* * *

The words were beginning to dance on the page. Teleus leaned back with a sigh and closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Reports, schedules, squads reorganizing—there was always work to be done, no matter how diligently he plowed through it. The tap on the door was welcome, though his heart beat louder when he saw who it was.

“Perfect timing, I could use a break.”

“No doubt,” Relius said, carefully setting the wine on the table. “You have had no one to remind you.” He set out cups, his movements slow and deliberate.

Teleus stifled an impulse to offer his help, waiting instead for Relius to pour. His hands only shook a little, so slight most people, distracted by the missing fingers and the scars, wouldn’t notice. He took the cup Relius offered. “It has never been anyone’s job to mind me.” 

“No, of course not,” Relius said, shaking his head. He looked down into his own cup, as though his next words were spelled out on the dark surface of the wine. Pulling a book from his pocket, he said, “It is no one’s job to write me poetry, either.” 

“I only copied it,” Teleus said.

“A copy, yes.” Relius looked at him then. Most people wouldn’t have recognized that look as a smile, but Teleus did. He allowed himself the smallest glimmer of hope. “A clean copy of a collection of poems written five hundred years ago, from a poet to his anonymous lover. Scholars have speculated about them for centuries, to no avail. They must have been very good at keeping their affair private.” He leaned forward, half out of his chair and close enough to put a knife in Teleus’s heart. “You may remember. We spoke of this once, idly, long ago.”

Teleus could still remember the cadence of Relius’s voice as he read one of those poems, his reverence as he touched the fragile pages. Despite his care, one page had torn; it was what inspired Teleus to begin his project in the first place. When everything had fallen apart, those poems had been a balm to Teleus’s bruised heart. Teleus had hoped they would be the same for Relius.

Of course, because he was no poet himself, Teleus could say none of this out loud. “I thought you might like them,” he said instead. 

Relius rose from his chair, only to sink to the floor in front of Teleus. “I like them very much,” he said, taking Teleus’s hands in his. “For their words, and for the hands which copied them out.” He kissed Teleus’s knuckles one at a time, mapping out the scars from years of hard use. 

Teleus opened his mouth, closed it, opened and closed it again. It was no good; every touch of Relius’s lips struck him speechless. But there were other uses for hands than wielding a sword or a pen, and better uses for mouths than words they both found it difficult to say. “Come on, you’ll get stiff sitting there,” Teleus said, rising to his feet and helping Relius to his. Hands still joined, they went away into the other room, leaving the papers for another day.

_No,_ _  
__I answer,_ _  
__my lover is not lost but_ _  
__here_ _  
__in bed beside me,_ _  
__stirring._  
 _We greet the sun_ _  
together._


End file.
